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Cotter Corp

State, EPA counter Cotter Corp.'s pilot study

By Kara Mason

Special to the Daily Record

Posted:
06/12/2017 04:27:44 PM MDT

The organic bioreactor pilot study Cotter Corp. wants to complete on the once-active uranium mill west of Cañon City is still awaiting final approval and may be for a while after government agencies countered the original proposal last week.

The state health department and the Environmental Protection Agency want Cotter to adhere to a different Statement of Work section in the Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study than the proposal was originally submitted as in March.

Agencies want Cotter to rework the plan so it fits under Section 10, not Section 9, of the SOW.

While a seemingly small adjustment, EPA public affairs specialist Lisa McClain-Vanderpool says Section 10 of the SOW refers specifically to treatability studies, such as the organic bioreactor pilot study. Section 9 revolves more around possible technologies that should be evaluated.

"In other words, results from studies done under Section 10 can inform what technologies may be included in Section 9," McClain-Vanderpool said.

The SOW describes the various parts of the investigation and technology evaluations and follows the typical sequence of events. Some of the events do have to be done in a sequence, so a reader of the SOW may assume the sequence must follow in that order.

Treatability studies are an exception, McClain-Vanderpool said.

It's unclear at this point how much reworking of the original plan will have to be done, Cotter plant manager Steve Cohen said.

June is the busiest month at the site, Cohen said. So any work done on the plan will have to start up again after the end of the month.

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Had the agencies approved the proposal under Section 9, Cohen said he could have been ready to begin the study within days. A mulch supplier and engineering company were ready to start work when given a thumbs-up.

"It's unfortunate that we got so many comments on a hole in the ground that was going to be filled with mulch," Cohen said.

The Cañon City Daily Record first reported on Cotter's small filtering tests in July 2016 -- since then, the studies have evolved. The March proposal to the EPA and state health department was to include an 8-feet deep trench filled with mulch. From previous tests, Cohen believes the mulch filter could be an efficient way to filter out uranium and molybdenum from groundwater.

Since the beginning, Cotter's pilot proposal has met resistance from the community advisory group.

In April, one CAG member compared the proposal study to an elementary school science project. Since those comments, Cotter has responded with studies backing the science they're hoping to try out on a larger scale.

CAG member Sharyn Cunningham told the Daily Record her major concern for the pilot study proposal was that more time should be devoted to finishing the Remedial Investigation.

"All attention should be paid to finding and filling in gaps in data that define the nature and extent of the contamination," Cunningham said.

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